My journal will soon be like Bernouilly's Travels, which mainly treat of invitations, dinners, and evening parties. But you must take the thing as it comes. Liken this journal to a stuff upon which are very different embroideries, some rich, some poor. The strong lasting stuff is my unalterable love for you, and the wish to make you live with me, as far as it is possible, my distant life; the embroideries are only copies of what I see or experience, and must therefore take the same character, be the colours sometimes glowing, sometimes faint. And it were not to be wondered at if they faded altogether in the choking city, which never can afford such lovely hues as beautiful nature. _May 21st._ I give you notice beforehand that I must remain true to the same theme, and record a breakfast at the Duke of Devonshire's at Chiswick. This is the prettiest sort of fête given here; they are given in the country, and the company are dispersed through the house and the beautiful gardens. Though called breakfasts, they begin at three and do not leave off before midnight. Prince B----, brother-in-law of Napoleon, was there,--another of those whom I formerly saw in that splendour which they borrowed only from the Sun of the world,--a splendour which so quickly vanished with its source. But the great ornament of the fête was the beautiful Lady Ellenborough. She came in a small carriage drawn by poneys not larger than Kamtschatkadale dogs, which she drove herself. From henceforward the doves may be unyoked from the chariot of Venus, and poneys harnessed to it instead. All sorts of equipages fare worse here than any where. At last night's Almack's there was such a 'bagarre' among them, that several ladies were obliged to wait for hours before the chaos was reduced to any order. The coachmen on these occasions behave like madmen, trying to force their way, and the English police does not trouble itself about such matters. As soon as these heroic chariot-drivers espy the least opening, they whip their horses in, as if horses and carriage were an iron wedge; the preservation of either seems totally disregarded. In this manner, one of Lady Sligo's horses had its two hind-legs entangled in such a manner in the fore-wheel of a carriage, that it was impossible to release them, and one turn of the wheel would infallibly have broken both. Notwithstanding this, the other coachman could hardly be prevailed on to stand still. When the crowd dispersed a little, they were forced to take out both horses, and even then it was with some difficulty they extricated the entangled one. All this time the poor animal roared like the lion in Exeter 'Change. At the same time a cabriolet was crushed to pieces, and 'en révanche' drove both its shafts through the window of a coach, from which the screams of several female voices proved that it was already full: many other carriages were damaged.